Great 1-0 win for Pohang over Urawa. The defence is looking solid although goals might be hard to come by.

Seoul are on fire. Seven goals in two matches for Adriano. Suwon, Hiroshima and Guangzhou have been disappointing so far. Hiroshima and Guangzhou are used to winning trophies. Suwon have long since forgotten what it feels like.

Suwon are a home win away from being right back in qualification contention.

Pohang now have a tough few matches to gather enough points to get through. Away in Australia, then home to Guangzhou and away in Saitama. Seoul are basically home dry already. Jeonbuk's group is still tight, but a win in Vietnam next month could see them start to pull away.

Do we reckon Korean sides are not taking this tournament as seriously as they used to then or has there been a general increase in the overall competitiveness of the competition that they're struggling to deal with as they did before?

Pohang sent quite a young squad out to Sydney the other night and they lost 1-0, Seoul huffed and puffed their way to a goalless draw with Shandong Luneng that same night (though to be fair to Seoul they've been the one Korean side that have actually looked decent in the ACL this year) and Suwon drew with Melbourne Victory at home earlier today which was their third consecutive draw in the group stage and leaves them struggling to qualify. Worst of all was Jeonbuk who became the first ever Korean club to lose to a Vietnamese side going down 3-2 away to Binh Duong and finishing the match with nine men.

None of them are doing as poorly as defending champions Guangzhou Evergrande who sit bottom of Group H with just two points from four matches so it's not all bad..

Pohang were always likely to struggle in a tough group. There have been a lot of draws in Suwon's group. But they're basically out if Melbourne beat Shanghai on April 19th. Jeonbuk suffered two red cards and the Vietnamese got two of their goals from penalties - curiously Bình Dương didn't get a single yellow card...

Given where the money is flowing it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the Koreans aren't dominating as in previous years. But strange things can happen in football. I'm just watching Wolfsburg beat Real Madrid 2-0. Wolfsburg have not impressed in the German league this season and looked disorganised at the weekend, while Real were beating Barcelona away.

Holyjoe wrote:Do we reckon Korean sides are not taking this tournament as seriously as they used to then or has there been a general increase in the overall competitiveness of the competition that they're struggling to deal with as they did before?

Pohang sent quite a young squad out to Sydney the other night and they lost 1-0, Seoul huffed and puffed their way to a goalless draw with Shandong Luneng that same night (though to be fair to Seoul they've been the one Korean side that have actually looked decent in the ACL this year) and Suwon drew with Melbourne Victory at home earlier today which was their third consecutive draw in the group stage and leaves them struggling to qualify. Worst of all was Jeonbuk who became the first ever Korean club to lose to a Vietnamese side going down 3-2 away to Binh Duong and finishing the match with nine men.

None of them are doing as poorly as defending champions Guangzhou Evergrande who sit bottom of Group H with just two points from four matches so it's not all bad..

Went to the Seoul and Suwon games this week. At Seoul, Shandong came to play for 0-0 and Seoul didn't seem like they could be bothered to try and break them down presumably knowing that barring a crazy set of results that would be enough to see them through too.

The Suwon game was much better with Suwon trying to win but I just think they're not very good this year. Kwon Chang Hoon's goal was excellent but they went to sleep a moment later. The Melbourne keeper made some very good saves (one in the first half was ridiculously good) but Suwon didn't really look like winning at any stage. I hope they somehow manage to turn it around and scrape through (so there's another midweek game to go to...and for the coefficent, of course) but can't see it.

Seems the Melbourne travelling support had been making good use of their time in Korea to learn some very naughty words, No Dong Geon being the primary target of their linguistic talents. The simpler "Suwon's a shithole and you have to live here" is one that could be incorporated into the repertoire of many teams though.